By Arathy Somasekhar and Evan Garcia
HOUSTON, July 9 (Reuters) – On Canal Street in Houston’s East End, where taco trucks, tortillerias and Spanish-language signboards line the streets, neighbors are still leaving flowers, candles and balloons on the pavement where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer this week.
The area, known as Magnolia Park, is one of Houston’s oldest Hispanic neighborhoods. First laid out in 1890, it was transformed by Mexican families fleeing revolution and seeking work on the nearby ship channel. Known as “Little Mexico,” it’s the heart of Houston’s Latino community, say local leaders.
The shooting has rattled Magnolia Park, named after the 3,750 magnolias that developers planted there, in ways that extend beyond the death itself, exposing fears in a neighborhood where many residents see stepped-up immigration enforcement as a threat to the community itself, and left them demanding answers.
“The fear, it’s real now. … It’s something this community has never seen before. It was always a happy community, fun, festive, music, smells of barbecue in the air,” said Jesse Rodriguez, an art historian and community leader who, along with his wife, has converted one of their ancestral homes to a museum about Magnolia Park.
“This happened here in our yard,” he continued, wearing a T-shirt that listed every street in the neighborhood. “What I see is how these people fear every day just to go work,” he added, saying that local residents are not planning to be quiet and remain behind closed doors.
STREET PROTESTS HIGHLIGHT THE ANGER
Community anger has spilled into the streets. More than 1,000 protesters marched on Wednesday near the shooting site before about 100 remained for a candlelight vigil.
ICE has said that Salgado, a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally for three decades, rammed his van into an agency vehicle and tried to run over an officer, who then fired on him.
Salgado’s family disputes the ICE account of the shooting and has demanded an independent investigation. The father of three and a construction worker had lived in Houston for 35 years and was in the process of obtaining a work permit, relatives said at a Wednesday press conference.
No official footage of the incident has been released as yet and the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday that the officers involved in the incident had not been issued body-worn cameras.
The Mexican government said on Thursday that it would examine possible criminal complaints in the U.S. involving the deaths of Mexican citizens in immigration custody or enforcement operations. A few FBI agents were seen entering businesses directly across from the scene on Thursday, according to a Reuters witness.
IMMIGRANT ROOTS
When federal agents move through a neighborhood whose identity is rooted in immigration, it can feel “like an invasion of sorts,” said Néstor Rodríguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“They’re not just going into disjointed communities where people don’t know each other. These are people whose family history is based there,” he continued.
Magnolia Park is 97% Hispanic and 44% are immigrants, according to Houston-based arts nonprofit Magnolia Park Arts & Community. In the broader city of Houston, about 44% of the population is of Hispanic origin, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Jorge Gonzalez, a 60-year-old who lives three houses away from the scene of the shooting, described the image of the ICE van in the neighborhood as “the weirdest thing” he’d ever seen.
‘JUST TRYING TO SURVIVE’
As calls for independent investigations increase, it remains to be seen if the incident will spark broader protests in Houston of the sort that have emerged in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis.
The city has reacted to past events with protest, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
But he said Houston has traditionally leaned more “politically apathetic.”
Back in Magnolia Park, the community is upset and frustrated, said Maria Rosas, 32, an accountant who grew up in the neighborhood.
“I think we’re all frustrated at the continuing raids and hauling of hardworking people who come here to provide for their families, provide a better future. They’re not causing any harm, they’re just trying to survive,” Rosas said.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar and Evan Garcia in Houston; Additional reporting by Nathan Crooks in Houston; Editing by Nathan Crooks and Howard Goller)
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